A bereaved mother has voiced her disbelief after police tried to give her the weapon her son was killed with in a shocking blunder.
Tragic Alex Morgan was killed in a vicious drug-fuelled attack by pal Bennet von Vertes in a Swiss ski chalet in 2014.
The 23-year-old victim died after a large candlestick was shoved down his throat during the sickening violence.
But his devastated mum Katja Faber said she was stunned when police contacted her to ask if she wanted items "returned" - including the candle used in the killing.
Katja said she was horrified when she was sent a list of items by Swiss police which included a candle.
Von Vertes, who had taken cocaine and ketamine, claimed he thought Alex was going to kill him, telling police he thought his friend was an alien with red eyes and long ears.
Katja told the Daily Mail she was stunned when a state prosecutor asked if she wanted her son's belongings returned to her - even though she believed there were no items remaining.
When she was sent a list, it revealed that authorities were trying to return the candle which had claimed Alex's life.
The former criminal barrister told the Daily Mail that she "could not believe" what she was reading.
Her son's blood-covered clothes were also among the items they were offering her, along with a candle.
Katja said: "It specified how long the candle was. I had to look again.
"I sat there, looking at this list, thinking: 'Am I seeing things? Am I going mad?'"
Alex, a former pupil at Prince Charles' old boarding school, Gordonstoun, had been set to meet his mum for a skiing holiday when the brutal killing unfolded.
He and wealthy friend von Vertes had been for a night out in nearby Meilen and had been playing chess when the drug-fuelled attack unfolded.
Von Vertes was initially jailed for 12 years for the crime, but three judges downgraded his voluntary manslaughter conviction on appeal to the lesser charge of negligent killing last week.
They accepted his claim he was suffering from "self-inflicted insanity" and didn't know what he was doing after taking a cocktail of booze and mind-altering drugs.
Speaking after the case, Katja, a former criminal barrister who is separated from her son's Scottish financier father, said: “To have society acknowledge that a wrong was done and my child’s life was worth something to then being told ‘no his killer is actually only guilty of getting high’ – that’s difficult.
“Clearly there is something wrong with that law that needs to be changed and I’m considering being the one who attempts to change it.”
Alex was killed at the von Vertes' villa on the Gold Coast of Lake Zurich after von Vertes downed alcohol and took ketamine, cocaine and sleeping pills.
It sent him into a psychotic state with paranoid delusions, and he claims he thought his friend was an alien, with green eyes and red ears, who was trying to kill him.
Von Vertes, whose family runs an art gallery in Zurich, stabbed Mr Morgan with shards of glass from a coffee table and bludgeoned him with a metre-long candlestick and a golden sculpture.
The killer then rammed the candlestick down Mr Morgan's throat, choking him to death.
Mr Morgan met von Vertes while both were studying business administration at Regent's College, now Regent's University, in London.
